Excerpt from The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 5 of 7: The Literary Remains; Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit Thus minded, he sought to justify the ways of God to man in the only way in which they can be justified to any one who deals honestly with his conscience, namely, by showing, where possible, their consequence from, and in all cases their cousis teney with, the ideas or truths of the pure reason which is the same in all men. With what success he labored for thirty years in this mighty cause of Christian philosophy, the readers of his other works, especially the Aids to Re ection, will judge: if measured by the number of resolved points of detail his progress may seem small but if tested by the weight and grasp of the principles which he has established, it may be confidently said that since Christianity had a name few men have gone so far. If ever we are to find firm footing in Biblical criticism between the extremes (how often meeting 3) of Socinianism and Popery - if the indisputable facts of physical science are not forever to be left in a sort of admitted antagonism to the supposed asser tions of Scripture - if ever the Christian duty of faith in God through Christ is to be reconciled with the religious service of a being gifted by the same God with reason and a will, and sub jected to a conscience, - it must be effected by the aid, and in the light, of those truths of deepest philosophy which in all Mr. Coleridge's works, published or unpublished, present themselves to the reader with an almost affecting reiteration. But to do justice to those works, and adequately to appreciate the Author's total mind upon any given point, a cursory perusal is insufficient study and comprehension are requisite to an accurate estimate of the relative value of any particular denial or assertion and the apparently desultory and discontinuous form of the observations now presented to the Reader more especially calls for the exercise of his patience and thoughtful circumspection. With this view the Reader is requested to observe the dates which, in some instances, the Editor has been able to affix to the notes with certainty. Most of those on Jeremy Taylor belong to the year 1810, and were especially designed' for the perusal of Charles Lamb. Those on Field were written about 1814; on Hacket, in 1818; on Donne, in 1812 and 1829 on the Pilgrim's Progress, in 1833; and on Hooker and the Book of Common Prayer, between 1820 and 1830. Coleridge's mind was a grow ing and accumulating mind to the last, his whole life one of ln quiry and progressive insight, and the dates of his opinions are therefore in some cases important, and in all interesting. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."